I think that if I were to go with a double, then the Campy gruppo would be cheaper, but the minute you go triple on Campy, you break the group.
Yep. If you want a triple Campy setup, you have to pay for the components individually, which in our case meant that the bike shops didn't even want to do it. (I think it's hard for them to even make a profit on Campy these days without making it unreachably expensive.) We wound up going NOS for my new bike for this reason (plus we had some unused parts lying around anyway). I was able to buy my wheels locally but everything else I bought on eBay.