yea, if your planning it all out up front, i would really suggest drilling the main tank, and then running a sump, the sump not only adds a place for you to hide your equipment, but it allso adds to the total water volume in the system, and thats a good thing cause it adds stability, and the name of the game is stability... the more stable your system, the easier it is to care for, the more likely you are to be successfull, and the more slowly bad things happen, and this gives you more time to react and catch them before they get too bad...
you can build your own sump if you can operate a tape measure and a tube of toothpaste, just find yourself a tank(i get mine from craigslist) take it to a glass shop and ask them to cut you some baffels, then take that home and silicone them in, TADAA you have just built yourself a sump...
we can discuss all the details on where to put the baffels and how tall they should be if and when you get to that point...
something else that you should really think about now, is what exactly are you gonna keep in the main tank? you said reef, ok, thats a good starting point, but do you want animones, or corals, or mushrooms, or what, these are the things that you should know now, so that you can get the right lights, and stuff the first time, rather than doing what i did, and starting out with the cheap lights, and now i have to upgrade, when, i knew from the start that i wanted to go in a specific direction...
so, welcome aboard, please feel free to ask questions, we were all new at this at one point or another, and we all have to learn... and you cant really learn if your not asking questions...
something else that you might think about, pick up a couple books, 2 that i really liked were the "consciencious aquariust) or something like that, and then i also got the "saltwater aquariums for dummies" yea i admit it, i read the dummies book, and you konw what, i learned stuff from it, and it only cost me $2 at a used book store... SOOOOOOO worth it!