As a newbie, I'd go with SH-M088 + PD-A530.

I put several thousand miles on a similar combo (Specialized Comp MTB shoes and PD-M520 SPD pedals.) It is heavy, but bulletproof, and you can walk in those shoes almost as if they were sneakers, because cleats are recessed into the sole (there's still some clacking on hard surfaces, but it's not a big deal.) It's technically a mountain bike combo intended for people who need to carry their bikes at times over all sorts of terrain, but many road cyclists use it too. It would be easier to learn on reversible pedals like A540, so I'd suggest to get those unless you really want to be able to wear sneakers.

Recently I "upgraded" to "real" road pedals (Mavic's SPD-SL clones). I saved somewhere around 200 g, but it's harder to walk, cleats are made of flimsy plastic (I'm about to put on the third set of cleats since January), and they are non-reversible. To clip into a reversible SPD pedal, you step on the pedal with the right spot on the foot and press down, and you're done. With one-sided SPD-SL's, it's trickier.
On a few occasions, I tried to step on the wrong side of the pedal and my foot slipped, resulting in a painful bruise on the shin. You really don't need this kind of grief as a beginner, not to save 200 g of weight.