... update
Thought id share my decision.
I opted for the 'trigger an insert on email verification by user' approach!
A single record insert is triggered only if 3 conditions were met;
Does a record exist for user
Is users type account = 2
Has the email been verified email = 1
I used INNER JOIN in mysql query to pull two tables together and validate the condition above. The query would return either an exisit or not exist result to work with.
If exist, the record insert option is removed and if not exist, the insert record option is presented for the user to insert!
And it works perfectly.