Enable a tool dialog box to display selected values from a related attribute table

Hi there,
I guess I am probably trying to stretch python too far but what I want to do is create a user interface that makes it easier to edit several datasets and some that have related tables. I can quite easily automate updating the datasets and relates from user input in my dialog using search cursors and update cursors but what I am having trouble with is exposing the existing values of the selected set to a user in a dialog box.
I thought that the validation dialog box would be the best place to start but I need to ensure the user only has a few records or 1 and when I do a GetCount operation in the validation script everytime I simply touch the tool (not even open it) it seems to go into a get count loop. I'm guessing ArcObjects is probably the best way forward with this but it's a long time since I've done any ArcObjects and it seems annoying that the rest of the solution works so well in Python. I am working in ArcGIS 10 on a personal geodatabase for testing and will then migrate solution to ArcSDE and oracle.

Any thoughts on most effective way to do this would be much appreciated.

Regards,
Suzanne