Worried about marriage green card options??

I have been dating my partner for 3 years, living together for 2: Met in his country and dated for a year, then I got a different visa to live with him for another year in his country, and he moved here for a job nearly a year ago (I'm a US citizen). We have been living in the US the past 10 months with him on a J1 visa. We have been talking about getting married as an abstract idea for nearly half of our relationship.

Near the end of January, he left on a business trip for a week. He left on the day Trump was inaugurated and came back the day of the immigrant ban. It really freaked us out (even though he's white, non-Muslim, and from a Western country. When you love someone so much it is hard not to worry!) so a few days later we decided to get married. Why not? We knew we wanted to eventually anyway. We picked up the marriage license that day, had our friend get ordained, told our families, and had a mini ceremony. The ceremony was 2 weeks after he arrived back.

We just met with an immigration lawyer today and he chided us for getting married so soon after my SO arrived back, saying that he can't have entered knowing he was going to get married. We didn't think about this at all (he was only gone for a week!), but technically, we knew we were going to get married about as much as we did the first time he entered 10 months ago, which is to say it was still an abstract idea of knowing we would eventually. I can see how this could look, but we seriously didn't have some master plan to sneak him in to get married, not even when he entered more recently.

Now, our lawyer said my SO can go back to his home country and apply from there as a different route, but it will take way longer and I don't want to be apart for so long. He also said he has seen hundreds of cases like ours (the first option of filing from here anyway) and hasn't lost one yet, but he still rattled me so much and I have been panicking so hard since. I guess I'd like to hear people weigh in on this