Kate's Wedding No 3
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.
It’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. ‘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. That 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.
Remember 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.
