sounds like you are getting an error because you have a database greater than ten gig on a SQL express installation;
my recommendation would be to spend $45 dollars and buy the developer edition on Amazon so you can at least get started with fixing your data to fit into the ten gig limitation;
you'll need to strip out or archive a lot of data to get it to comply with the 10 gig limitation again.
otherwise plan on buying the standard edition for the production installation.
Lowell