Design a farewell that feels right for you.
Whether you’re honoring someone you’ve lost or planning ahead for your own farewell, Afterparty leads you through the process of designing a gathering that feels personal, meaningful, and true to your values.
You’ll leave with a clear, custom plan—and the confidence to carry it forward.
Why Afterparty?
End-of-life events hold emotional and symbolic weight.
But too often, they’re generic, rushed, or disconnected from who the person really was.
We offer a different approach.
Afterparty is a design-forward process for creating intentional end-of-life gatherings — memorials, celebrations-of-life, pre-planned farewells, or entirely unique events. We support you in shaping an experience that feels authentic and meaningful — rooted in story, tone, and values.
Whether it’s a backyard dinner, storytelling circle, beach ritual, or jazz procession — we help you design a space that feels like them (or you).
You bring the stories and the feelings.
We bring the structure and the emotional clarity.
Together, we shape something beautiful.
Our signature method
Every meaningful gathering has an emotional arc.
We guide you through five essential phases to design an experience with depth and intention:
The invitation – how to set the tone and expectations
The opening – shifting from daily life into sacred or shared space
Key moments – rituals, stories, activities, or symbols that anchor meaning
The closing – how you mark the end with intention
Aftershocks – small ripples that extend the experience
The Afterparty Design Process
A guided, two-part experience to help you create a farewell gathering that feels personal, powerful, and unique.
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✅ 60-minute intake session
We listen deeply, get to know the person being honored, and explore the emotional and relational landscape. This is the foundation of what’s to come.✅ 90-minute collaborative design session
Together, we use our signature method to create the tone, structure, and heart of your experience.✅ The Afterparty Blueprint (PDF)
A personalized 2–3 page document that captures your plan and creative vision. You can use it to move forward confidently — or hand it off to a trusted celebrant, planner, or family member.Your Blueprint includes:
Event tone and guiding values
Suggested flow: opening, key moments, closing
Ritual, reading, or activity ideas
Sample language for invitations or speaker cues
Optional: music, sensory elements, or symbolic gestures
Ideas for what to share ahead of time, and what to carry forward after
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✅ A clear, beautiful plan for your gathering
✅ Emotional and creative clarity
✅ Support for decision-making and family alignment
✅ A document you can share, delegate from, or keep as a keepsake
✅ Confidence to move forward — even in the face of grief or uncertainty
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$1,000 (early access rate)
We’re currently offering the Afterparty Design Process at a special early-access rate as we expand this service to more families and professional partners.Standard pricing for this service is $1,200
We take on a limited number of design clients each month to ensure every process is spacious, collaborative, and deeply supported.
Payment is collected at booking.
Rush options available for gatherings within 10–14 days (additional fee applies). -
✅ Families organizing a celebration-of-life, memorial, or service
✅ Individuals pre-planning their own farewell
✅ Friends, chosen family, or community organizers
✅ Anyone who doesn’t want a “default” gathering
✅ Those navigating grief and craving meaning-making, not just logistics
What our clients have to say …
This is tender work. Let’s do it together.
Book a free Discovery Call — we’ll listen, ask good questions, and see if we’re the right match to help you shape what’s next.
Who we are
Olivia Vagelos, Co-Founder
I am an Experience Designer and Strategist. Along with co-founding Aftermap, I run The Design for Feelings Studio, an agency focused on developing new tools and frameworks for experience design, teaching the craft of experience across industries, and supporting individuals, teams, and communities in using experience design to dream up more just, beautiful, regenerative futures. We work with people hungry for things to feel weirder, wilder, kinder, and more radical. The Studio is where we get to marry the left-brain rigor with the right-brain magic.
Before this, I spent many years at the design firm IDEO, Stanford’s d.school, and in big philanthropy, designing ways for us to make meaning and make beauty for one another. I’ve worked with organizations ranging from billion-dollar entertainment companies to global foundations, community-driven arts non-profits to collectives of educators, AI startups to research labs.
At the heart of all of it, my work is about the people — how we show up, how we hold space for one another, and how we create something unforgettable and unexpected.
“We bring creativity to planning so many things in life—birth, weddings, vacations, the big moments and the small. But death? We’re expected to figure it all out in crisis mode. Planning can be an act of care, and one of beauty.”
Danielle Balderas, Co-Founder
I’m a strategist and producer who loves bringing order to the messy parts of life.
Before building Aftermap I spent the last decade helping teams move big, often complicated, ideas forward. Working with global foundations like the Ford Foundation and UN Foundation, media organizations like The Meteor, education initiatives like XQ Institute, and arts nonprofits, I’ve produced summits, built digital tools, and led campaigns that help people see sticky problems more clearly.
I trained as a death doula with Alua Arthur through Going With Grace, where I was inspired by the many ways people tend to the end. But looking around at friends and family, I was struck by how many still felt like they were reinventing the wheel with every death—no roadmap, no single source of truth, no “here’s what to do next.”
At the heart of my work is a belief that clarity is a form of care—and that end-of-life planning can be both deeply practical and deeply human.
I like untangling hard problems. End-of-life planning is one of them. With Aftermap, we’re trying to make it radically simpler—and a little more kind.