Getting married and forgoing the wedding

To make it short and sweet, my fiance and I made the decision recently to get married sooner rather than later. I'm in this for a marriage and not a wedding to be honest, we feel doing a full on wedding would be for our friends and family at a later date, and since we've both been incredibly happy with the idea of making us getting legally married with a select few around just for us, that's what we're going to do. My issue comes with a lack of information anywhere regarding opting out of a ceremony. Frankly all I can find is things saying the license is signed after the ceremony, which is what we don't want to have. Our hope is that maybe we can do this our way, which is having a nice night at an upscale lounge (where the wedding reception later on will be) and have my ordained best friend sign off, and our two close friends will be witnesses. We are going for our license in Missouri on Friday and have all our ducks in a row, but I still don't know if it's okay legally to NOT have an actual ceremony. Hopefully see someone will have some insight or experience with this. Thank you!