Really you gotta wonder why Starfleet actually sent Picard and Data to retrieve Spock. I mean, technically neither of them have ever met the man (okay Picard was at his wedding but as part of a delegation (digression: we see that wedding in Vulcan’s Heart, Picard was an Lt. serving aboard a ship where the full senior staff was invited, I can’t remember if it was Saavik’s ship or not (she was the bride))). While Picard may have done some cultural observation and first contact scenarios a jaunt to Romulus is so much more than that. Really they should have had a Starfleet Intelligence point man, someone good with inflitration (and don’t tell me Starfleet doesn’t have spies). Data is shown to be an amateur at this too with his android movements and calling Picard “Captain” and “Sir” when they’re posing as civilians…
Yeah, this is definitely one that makes more sense from a story-telling point of view than a strategy one. The REAL reasons are, well, Picard is awesome and has gravitas to equal Spock’s, and Data is adorable and a fan favourite and a character frequently compared with Spock so he should get to go too.
I never never never like the idea of Spock marrying Saavik. I mean, I like Saavik, she’s a swell gal, but their age difference seems pretty big, and he was so much her superior in the chain of command it just feels off. In-show in-canon, did Picard actually say that it was Spock’s wedding or just “your son’s” wedding? I’ve always got around it by assuming that Sarek had another son with his second wife Perrin, and he was the one that got married.
So it was “You’re son’s Wedding” so in-series it was never explicit. Just like Saavik’s backstory was never quite explicit on Star Trek they’ve kept the novel canon from I want to say all the way back to the TWOK novelization (which I haven’t read since I was 10) that Saavik is half-Romulan, a failed experiment from the planet Hellguard, where Vulcans had been captured and forced to mate with Romulans. the colony collapsed and the kids were scavenging till Spock came along, and - among other things - was her sponsor to the academy.
I think for “Your Son” they didn’t want to make the link to TOS that explicit.