Normally Certbot is designed for the case where you have no HTTPS virtual host, only an HTTP virtual host. If you use --apache or --nginx, Certbot will create an HTTPS virtual host based on your existing HTTP virtual host.
If you use certbot certonly --webroot, then you again don't need to have an existing HTTPS virtual host but you can create one yourself by editing your web server configuration files.
Having an error about missing certificates suggests that you prematurely configured an HTTPS virtual host in your web server. Your web server typically shouldn't need to be configured for HTTPS before you've obtained your first certificate.
If you're sure that you want to do it this way, you don't need to wait for months. You can do
certbot certonly --webroot --force-renewal
immediately after configuring the HTTPS environment.