I believe if you are searching for something to get out the door in the month, the workaround mentioned in:
is the only option.
I have a question for you, are you OK collecting the password upfront? The registration as a service feature, if you can collect the password upfront will behave the way that you expect, you will be able to either require or defer email verification, but it will require that you collect the primary credential up front. This feature, in particular, is on our short-term roadmap, and the team is currently working on it. We are currently tracking towards ~ Oktane '18, but please remember, dates can change.
You can watch https://support.okta.com/help/OktaProductRoadMap, this feature is called Self-Service Registration.
Hope this helps,
Tom