The trunk is way to thick to compress it in to a shorter trere, as you stated.
I was not sure about the cascade branch, but it was either try it out or cut it off. I decicided to try it cascade, in a couple of months i will try and get it in the possition i want , if it dosnt look good off it goes. Besides i had never tried the raffia nad bending technique so it was good practice
. The wire situation i dont even want to talk about, For some reason this tree kicked my ass, I had to fight with it every branch twig and little piece of foliage, branches cracking and in the end to avoid braking more branced i ended up wiring some individually.