Lumber Thickness

This may be a question that really can't be answered depending on the material when seen on sight...

  I may be purchasing some lumber for lams in the next month or two...  The last time I bought lumber was also my first time...  I bought 3 pieces of 8/4 maple figuring it would be plus or minus 2" thick...  It was 2 1/4" so that is a lot of planing to get it down to 1 1/2" which is the only size I use for now...
  So my Question is...  In general when you are gonna purchase maple or could be other lumber also, would you purchase 6/4 if you want to plane it to 1 1/2" thick??  Or stay with 8/4??

[EwokArcher]

I bought a couple boards of morado and some padauk from a local supplier. I squared it up on the table saw and wasee able to split them down the middle to get two 1.5x3/4x 36 inch pieces from each board. I then used my band saw to slice Bout 3 laminations from each of my 3/4 thick pieces. Then it got tough getting them pretty and flat on my planer but everything up to that was easy.