Hacienda Doña Andrea de Santa Fe is the perfect place for a dream wedding. Located in a picturesque New Mexican village, the popular wedding venue has a colorful tiled interior outdone only by its dramatic views. The mountaintop venue typically hosts about 50 weddings per year, but since Santa Fe County began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in August 2013, more of these brides and grooms have been gay couples.

Over the past year, the hacienda has hosted 17 gay weddings, said owner and director Anne Contreras.

"And I just booked two more...over the last weekend," she said. Although Contreras' hacienda has hosted gay commitment ceremonies before, the legalization of same-sex marriage has given people a whole new reason to celebrate.

Same-sex couples from across the Southwest are flooding the Santa Fe County Clerk's office with marriage requests. The number of marriage licenses issued in the county has doubled since 2013, with a majority (about 55 percent) going to gay couples, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.

But New Mexico's gain is Texas' loss—and it's a big one.

Of the nearly 1,400 marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples in Santa Fe over the last year, at least 600 have gone to partners who traveled from Texas or Oklahoma. A similar phenomenon has occurred in New Mexico's Taos County. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, gay couples have signed 48 percent of marriage licenses issued since last August.

If the Lone Star State were to follow New Mexico's lead and legalize gay marriage, it could bring more than $181 million in state and local revenue, according to a recent study out of The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law. Much of this money would be spent on wedding businesses—from caterers to florists, planners and photographers—but because Texas won't lift its ban on same-sex unions, it's New Mexico that's getting an influx of cash.

"I'm sure it's bringing people to the area," said Contreras. "Tourism is a big deal here in Santa Fe."

In addition to the money visitors spend on hotels and restaurants, Santa Fe wedding businesses like Walter Burke Catering are flush with clients. Alexandra Burke is the assistant manager and event planner at the company. She says they typically cater about 800 events a year, but in recent months she's seen a noticeable increase in gay weddings.

"It's definitely a combination of local residents, folks who have been second-home residents of Santa Fe...and people coming in from out of town," said Burke.

Walter Burke has catered a wide range of gay weddings over the past year, said Alexandra Burke, from an extremely intimate affair for just the two partners and a total blowout that felt like a more traditional wedding.

"I think Santa Fe has, in some ways, been a little behind the times in terms of kind of recovering from the economic downturn from several years ago," Burke said. "So having more people interested in having a wedding makes a difference."

Researchers estimate the average same-sex wedding in Texas would cost about $6,000 per couple, roughly one-fourth the cost of the average heterosexual wedding in the state, according to the UCLA report. Judging by the experiences of people in New Mexico's wedding industry, it sounds like gay couples marrying there are spending less too.

Although some gay couples do pay tens of thousands of dollars for fancy fetes, many in Santa Fe wed in front of close friends and family in smaller, more intimate ceremonies, said Doña Andrea's Contreras. An official wedding is significant, she noted, but many same-sex couples have found other ways to show their dedication to each other over the years, from commitment ceremonies to building a family together.

"I'm particularly moved to see couples with their children," said Contreras, because I think children of same-sex parents often feel the discrimination and marginalization imposed on their parents. Whether it's young children or grown adults, watching their parents legally wed is a moving scene," she said.