And on Christmas Day there was a famous face in the congregation – Kate Winslet – who had made the short journey from her nearby home to sing carols with the locals.
Onlookers said she looked ‘radiantly happy’, as well she might – for she had married her beau, Ned RocknRoll, three weeks earlier in upstate New York. Since then, they have been honeymooning in the UK at their new home.
Happy couple: Kate Winslet and Ned Rocknroll
And they must have been in a bubble of bliss indeed, for it seems neither set of parents knew what they had done until reports of the union emerged on Wednesday.
Winslet’s father, Roger, said: ‘What are you going on about?’ when asked about the wedding.
RocknRoll’s father, Robert, echoed: ‘It’s not something I know of – but nothing would surprise me with those two.’
Neither was willing to venture further comment yesterday, and Kate’s sister, Anna, also had nothing to say about the happy news.
Titanic friends: Winslet and DiCaprio
Titanic friends: Winslet and DiCaprioIt’s not, perhaps, the full-blooded endorsement which one might hope for from one’s family, but then it turns out that, for whatever reason, this wedding has been kept very much low-key.
Friends say it was a ‘really romantic, private ceremony’ attended by only a handful of family and friends.
It is thought to have taken place at a resort in the Catskill mountains – in a heated barn with a rather hippyish country-chic vibe.
The ceremony is understood to have been brief and very simple, with the venue filled with wild flowers in jam jars and pretty coloured lanterns.
The bride was presented with a ring made by British jeweller Charles Goode, of Goode and Son, who is a friend of the couple and who designed Zara Phillips’s engagement ring.
Ned’s best man was his brother, Jack, a professional sailor. Other guests included Winslet’s children Mia, 12, by her first husband Jim Threapleton and Joe, eight, by her second, film director Sam Mendes.
It was, in fact, the second time Mia had seen her mother marry, as she was also a flower girl when Kate married Mendes in the West Indies in 2003.
Rather oddly, given that Ned is one of four children and Kate one of three, and given that both are social people, there were only a dozen guests – although there were unconfirmed reports that Winslet’s Titanic co-star and close friend, Leonardo DiCaprio, gave her away.
A source said: ‘Marriage has always been on the cards and they’ve been talking about doing it for the past couple of months. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing, but they wanted to keep it secret.’
But why were both sets of parents apparently not included? Perhaps because Winslet, 37, was so determined to keep it private, mindful of jibes about her much-married status.
As she said in a recent interview about the end of her marriage to Sam Mendes – and both parties’ subsequent new partners: ‘There’s no way I’m going to allow my children to be ****ed up because my marriages haven’t worked out.
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‘I so wish that that wasn’t the case, that that hadn’t happened in my life, but it has. So I will make the best of it.’
In the wake of this third marriage, there have been mutterings from those who are usually very positive about Winslet about her being a ‘loveaholic’ who is endlessly excited by the drama of finding her soulmate.
Certainly, the fact that she has embarked upon another union without any kind of pre-nuptial agreement to protect her £12million fortune certainly marks her down as a romantic.
Yesterday, the the actress’s spokesman said only: ‘I can confirm that Kate Winslet married Ned RocknRoll in New York earlier this month in a private ceremony attended by her two children and a very few friends and family. The couple had been engaged since the summer.’
She was seen in New York with Ned, who is 34 and is recently divorced himself, a few days before the ceremony, having a very jolly lunch at the Isola Trattoria and Crudo bar in the Mondrian SoHo hotel.
Fellow diners say that they spent several hours hugging and giggling, and working their way through two bottles of rose champagne.
Heiress Eliza Pearson and Ned Rocknroll on their wedding day. They divorced two years later
Heiress Eliza Pearson and Ned Rocknroll on their wedding day. They divorced two years laterThat ought to silence those who think this quiet wedding may be the prelude to an announcement that she’s pregnant.
However, it is widely said that she and Ned are hoping to add to the somewhat complex family unit with children of their own – and sooner rather than later.
‘They are very much in love, and seem to be extremely happy together,’ offers a friend of Ned’s, who adds that from the beginning of their time together they were talking about marriage and children.
Kate dropped a heavy hint earlier this year that she wanted to go for marriage a third time when she told an interviewer: ‘I still believe in the beauty of committing yourself to another person and in the idea of marriage as an expression of that commitment.’
Her filming schedule is indeed suggestive of a break over the next few months. She has just finished making the movie, Labor Day, with Barbra Streisand’s stepson Josh Brolin.
For now she is back in the manor house in rural Sussex which she and Ned bought this autumn for £2million.
The couple asked to erect wooden fencing and high oak gates, no doubt hoping to improve privacy and security. But some locals feel that the proposed measures are too ‘suburban’ in feel for the rural area.
The parish council registered its objections, calling the plans ‘visually intrusive and incongruous’.
Several of the actress’s neighbours attended a meeting in the village hall at which they expressed their concerns.
Those squabbles aside, Kate is committed to a move back to the UK. Her old apartment in New York, which she retained after splitting from Sam Mendes, is being rented out.
The thinking is that she and Ned will live together in the Home Counties, with him continuing to work for his uncle, Sir Richard Branson, on his Virgin Galactic space tourism programme.
They have offices in Leicester Square and Ned, whose expertise is in marketing, will continue his job.
The move will allow Kate’s daughter, Mia, to see her father, film director Jim Threapleton, more easily. Threapleton had been in the habit of travelling to New York once a month to see his child.
And the move back to Britain will also allow Sam Mendes easier access to his son, Joe.
Winslet met Ned RocknRoll, who changed his name from the more prosaic surname Abel Smith, on Richard Branson’s Necker Island in July 2011.
A likeable charmer who had gone to the island to get over the failure of his first marriage to Sussex landowner Viscount Cowdray’s daughter Eliza, he seems to have snagged her hook, line and sinker.
They were said to be all but living together in New York not too long afterwards, even though when they met she had been on holiday with her then boyfriend, British model Louis Dowler.
By September, she was attending a memorial service for Branson’s father, Ted, with Ned.
Dowler later complained: ‘I don’t think Kate behaved well and it is still very raw for me. I was in love with her, and you can’t switch that off overnight.’
Is this the Winslet way? It seems she is in the habit of leaving less time than is entirely polite between ditching one man and taking up with another.
Neither of the couple's parents seemed to know about the pair marrying
Neither of the couple's parents seemed to know about the pair marryingRemember how she and first husband Jim Threapleton were perfect for each other, newly married and with a baby? She gave an interview about their bliss. But by the time it came out in 2001, she had dumped Jim and a little while after it turned out that she had moved on to Sam Mendes.
Of course, she’s not the first serial monogamist in showbusiness, and it is wise to watch out for the double standards which are sometimes applied to women’s behaviour – as opposed to men’s – when it comes to dating.
But there are those who will wonder at her latest choice of husband. For it has to be said that La Winslet and Mr RocknRoll are the oddest of matches.
While Kate grew up in Reading the daughter of a jobbing actor, Ned is a bohemian whose uncle Richard is, as we know, one of the richest men in Britain.
Born Edward Lyulph Abel Smith in 1978, Ned is the son of Richard Branson’s sister, Lindy.
His father is Robert Abel Smith, the deputy chairman of the Mesopotamia Petroleum Company. His marriage to Lindy broke up when Ned was only a toddler.
Ned is one of five boys raised in Parsons Green, South London, with his mother, an artist and sculptor, and stepfather Robin Brockway, a graphic design consultant.
Family life for Ned was fairly chaotic – particularly after the arrival of twin siblings.
Uncle Richard helped to ameliorate the family’s crowded conditions by buying the house next door for them, allowing them to knock the two properties together.
Ned got to know his first wife Eliza Pearson through his mother, who is good friends with the Cowdray family.
Although there were ten years between Ned and Eliza, they started dating when she was 18 and announced their engagement when she was 20. They married in September 2009 at her family’s 17,000-acre estate.
A druid called JJ Middleway led the open-air pagan ceremony, which was conducted near a meditation pyramid in the garden, under the shade of an avenue of giant wellingtonia trees.
But within 20 months they had separated.
Eliza went back to live with her parents and started planning to set herself up in business running ‘green’ workshops; Ned stayed in London on his own.
Now he is the husband of one of the most famous women in the world.
Winslet and RocknRoll made their first red carpet appearance together in January at the Golden Globes in Los Angeles, where the actress won for her role in TV series Mildred Pierce.
Ned did not attend the ceremony at Buckingham Palace last month when Kate was awarded a CBE, but has been at her side at numerous other engagements.
Though one chum of Ned says that he has ‘buckets of the Branson charm’ and is ‘quite nice, but not what you would call short on self belief’, Winslet says that in RocknRoll she has found a fun-loving free spirit who supports her unstintingly – and they do look a delightfully happy couple.
You can only hope that her happy ever after is happier the third time around.
THE CEREMONIES THAT CAME BEFORE: BANGERS & MASH AND PARADISE VILLA
Kate Winslet and Jim Threapleton
Kate Winslet and Jim ThreapletonWEDDING No1: BANGERS AND MASH IN A PUB
Kate Winslet’s first marriage to producer Jim Threapleton in 1998 was a low-key affair with only two celebrities among the 150 guests.
A church service in Reading was followed by a wedding breakfast of bangers and mash in a local pub.
The couple kissed as they left the church and Kate beamed as she posed for pictures – but her nose was red from weeping throughout the ceremony.
She was so desperate to preserve her privacy that she turned down a six-figure sum from OK magazine which wanted to cover the wedding.
She said she felt ‘like a princess’ in her Alexander McQueen dress, an ivory creation with hand-sewn antique beads.
Her Titanic co-star Leonardo DiCaprio sent a ‘best wishes’ telegram. Kate and Jim were married for three years.
WEDDING No2: 4 GUESTS AND A PARADISE VILLA
Second husband Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet
Second husband Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet
Kate's second marriage to Oscar-winning producer Sam Mendes in 2003 had only four guests – her daughter Mia and three friends.
The couple, who had been dating for 21 months, married in the garden of a sun-kissed villa in the West Indies.
Kate’s mother Sally said they were only told about the wedding once the couple had returned to London.
The wedding in idyllic Barnes Bay, on the south-western tip of the Caribbean island of Anguilla, was toasted with glasses of champagne.
It was so understated that even the Reverend John Gumbs, who officiated at the ceremony, had no idea who Kate Winslet was.
The churchman told how it was an orthodox Methodist ceremony, in which neither promised to obey the other.
Kate and Sam were married for seven years.Source:http://www.dailymail.co.uk
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