The topic of gay marriage makes for stimulating discussion. Try it sometime at your local post office, school PTO meeting or church social.

In all the doom-and-gloom economic news of late, there’s a sunny development in Massachusetts, where gay marriage has resulted in a $111 million windfall for the state’s economy.

No disrespect to Massachusetts, but the Bay State was not exactly known as a major wedding destination when its highest state court legalized gay marriage in 2003. Las Vegas has a reputation as a wedding destination. Hawaii, yes, big wedding destination. Where I live, a little island on the Florida Gulf Coast, is known or wants to be known as the beach wedding capital of the nation. But Massachusetts?

So, it’s sweet that the state got such a sweetheart deal in legalizing same-sex marriage five years ago. Dressmakers and tailors, restauranteurs and caterers, hoteliers and banquet hall operators, photographers and disc jockeys, lounge singers and ministers know weddings bring big bucks.

A new study released on the fifth anniversary of same-sex couples marrying in Massachusetts examined the impact gay weddings and confirms that gay weddings bring big, big bucks.

The research shows that one in 10 same-sex couples who married in Massachusetts spent more than $20,000 on their weddings and the average same-sex couple spent $7,400. About 12,000 weddings generated about $111 million over five years.

“Allowing gay couples to marry won’t end the recession, but their spending still helps in tough times for businesses,” says M.V. Lee Badgett, a co-author of the study and director of the Center for Public Policy & Administration at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

A second study from the UCLA Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy shows that legalizing same-sex marriage has given Massachusetts an edge in attracting young, highly-educated, “creative class” professionals.

“Creative class” — a term popularized by economist Richard Florida — refers to the thinkers, decision-makers, knowledge-based workers considered key to economic development.

Williams scholar Gary J. Gates, author of the study, analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and found that same-sex couples in this “creative class” were 2.5 times more likely to move to Massachusetts after 2004 than before that year. Williams says “the timing of this movement to Massachusetts suggests that those couples were flocking to the first state to allow them to marry.”

So maybe we — as in you and me and Congress — can repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act and then maybe we — as in you, me, our courts, legislators and voters — can legalize gay marriage across the nation.

Perhaps we might even alleviate the need for some of those corporate handouts of late. I was planning to maybe buy a new Prius — though I’d rather have a VW microbus — to do my part for the economy, but I would invest in a big wedding instead and bring down a party of family and friends.

And for those looking for a destination, if Florida lawmakers ever wake up and realize the economic importance of legalizing same-sex marriage in a tourist state, I have some friends and neighbors in the beach wedding capital of the nation who want to boost their income by renting more resort rooms overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, shooting photographs of same-sex weddings at sunset, catering rehearsal dinners by the pool, dressing wedding parties in Hawaiian shirts or white linens, decorating reception tables with orchids and miniature palm trees and presiding over the “I do” comments.

But I guess, for now, at least I can think how sweet it is for two girls or two boys in love, perhaps right here in the beach wedding capital of the nation, to dream about eloping to … Massachusetts, the gay wedding capital of the nation.