Thanks Alan! I ended up going with the 3/4" and am starting out with just a few accessories. I bought two holdfasts from Grammercy, and two brass dogs with the side wires that keep them from falling through the dog holes.
One thing that I'm hoping won't become a problem is....
Because I needed more material than I had picked up at the sawmill, and because I had a bunch of black walnut hanging around from years ago when we had a tree taken down at our property, and because I thought a little bit of an accent color would be nice... Well, I used black walnut for the dog hole strip. It's a much softer wood than the ash I used for the rest of the top, and I'm finding that the spring on the side of the dogs digs into it a little bit.
I figure the orientation of the dogs will always be the same direction, so there's a point at which each hole will have it's little "wire groove" established and that's that. I don't expect it will affect functionality or continually "get worse". We shall see (and if anyone reading decides to similarly accent the dog hole strip, perhaps consider using a harder wood than I did).