Don't get AE. it's confusing but basically, you can play the latest version of Skyrim without AE. Buying AE only gets you access to some kinda useless paid mods from the creation club. in terms of modding, when people talk about AE, they mean Skyrim SE version 1.6 and up.
As far as mods, to make MME work, you need Bodyslide to build the bodies and get the morphs to work. You need Sexlab & ZaZ Animation pack to make the H scenes work. You want FNIS or Nemesis to load the ZaZ animations in. If you have multiple mods that changes body sizes, then SLIF (SexLab Inflation Framework) is probably better to make it work. If you use 3BA, then you need a bit more fiddling to make the morphs work too.
Otherwise, you could download a Wabbajack Modpack like Nefaram or Masterstroke and potentially save a lot of trouble.
Edit : I found an old post I made about modding Skyrim in the past, it was abandoned quick, and kind of bare bones (maybe I should get back to it at some point...). But could be a good starting point :
https://f95zone.to/threads/discussi...ns-guides-polls-q-as-etc.132555/#post-9099228
I've modded this game a good bit since, and currently have a modlist of my own working with over 750 mods, mostly around making the game prettier, harsher, lewder with a decent amount of mods that deals with sex, pregnancy & BE. So, if you have more questions I could probably go quite a bit more into detail..
