I was planning on asking about the trimming after drying too... I tried the hanging it from string in a cardboard box with the newspaper on top to help slow the drying that was recommended by some and it worked great. I also had some in a closet with a humidifier to keep the humidity at 50-55% and a space heater keeping it at 70 degrees and this worked well too. It dried faster in the closet but still retained a nice smell. In fact I think it retained a bit more of the smell it had while on the plant than the stuff I had curing in the boxes.
However I trimmed mine up (but leave it on the branches) before hanging it, I've always trimmed it up before drying, not after. It seems like it would be harder when dry.. Is there an advantage to trimming it after drying? Does it end up more potent, is it actually easier to trim? I've seen several posts with people mentioning they trim after drying... I'm just curious if there is a reason or if it's just personal preference.
The problem I see... You could take down a massive amount just trimming off the fan leaves and hanging it to dry in one night.. Most of it will cure at roughly the same speed and need to be trimmed and jarred at just the right time when it's dry, but not too dry.. So it seems like you'd have to trim nearly all of it in one night and jar it.. If you only do half one night because it's just too much work, 24 hours later might end up in the rest starting to get too dry, another day even worse, etc.
Where if you go in and take off the top half of your plants, trim them up, leave it trimmed but still on branches so you can hang it, you can do smaller batches, I usually take off the top 1/2 of my plants and then let the bottom 1/2 go another week to fill out more... I'm a one man team though.. No helpers. So I try to work it out in stages.
Anyway my $.02..