Yesterday, we discussed the sudden news (?) that Kate Winslet had ended up marrying something called Ned RockNRoll. Ned and Kate have been together for most of 2012, much to the consternation of people who are like, “Seriously? You’re an Oscar winning actress and you’re marrying a dude named Ned RockNRoll?” So obviously, those thoughts quickly turned to “Oh, maybe she married him because she’s knocked up…?” Which isn’t the most outlandish thought – Kate has had two previous marriages, and she had one child per marriage. So is there a little RockNRoll on the way? Page Six says no… not YET, anyway. Sources tell Page Six she flat-out isn’t pregnant. But sources tell The Mail that it’s only a matter of time until she does get knocked up. The Mail has a really detailed story about the nuptials and how Kate didn’t even tell her parents, even though she and Ned are in the UK right now, spending time with her folks. She’s so weird.

The church of St Mary and St Gabriel in Harting, West Sussex, is a picture perfect slice of traditional English country life. 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. 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.

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.

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.

[From The Mail]

I didn’t realize that Ned has a full-time job with his uncle…? Is that new? Because it seems like Ned hasn’t worked at all over the past year – he was just following Kate around, being her Beck & Call Boy. Which is fine, I guess, if that’s what you want.

Last thing: Richard Branson’s wedding present to the couple: a free flight into space worth £124,000! Kate will now have a seat on the space rocket thing that sends people out 60 miles above the Earth’s surface.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.

I had kind of forgotten about Kate Winslet and Nes RockNRoll, her lover of more than a year. Honestly, I was TRYING to forget about them because they seemed like such a “WTF?” couple and I’m still not really clear what he does for a living, and it bugs me that Kate is with a K-Fed. But now she’s legally married to her K-Fed, her scrub, her RockNRoll lovah. Gross.

Academy Award winner Kate Winslet has wed Ned Rocknroll in a secret ceremony, Us Weekly can exclusively confirm.

The Titanic actress, 37, married the fellow Brit, 34, “in early December in New York,” according to a source. “They were surrounded by a small group of friends and close family members.”

UPDATE: Winset’s UK rep Sara Keene tells Us: “I can confirm that Kate Winslet married Ned Rock’nRoll in NY 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.”

The two were first linked in the fall of 2011, though neither has mentioned an engagement.

This is the third marriage for Winslet. The Reader actress was wed to director Jim Threapleton from 1998 to 2001; they are parents to daughter Mia, 12. Winslet and director Sam Mendes tied the knot in 2003 and divorced seven years later; they are parents to son Joe, 9.

Rocknroll, the nephew of Virgin billionaire Richard Branson, was previously married to British socialite Eliza Cowdray, the daughter of a multimillionaire viscount.

In September 2012, Winslet and Rocknroll (born Abel Smith) purchased a 15th-century home in West Sussex, England. “Ned is really happy with Kate,” a source once told Us of the couple. “He feels he can learn so much from her.”

[From Us Weekly]

Well, I guess Ned’s divorce came through! When Kate and Ned first got together, there were lots of UK reports about how his wife was not happy about Winslet – Ned and Eliza had been separated, but according to Eliza, they were working on it… until Kate came by. Kate is pretty tight with Ned’s uncle Richard Branson, so…? I don’t even know what that means. Will she be Kate Winslet-RockNRoll? Kate RockNRoll?

Do you want to know the coolest part of this quiet, surprise wedding? According to Radar, Leonardo DiCaprio gave her away!!! That actually makes me like LEO more, that he would do that for his girl Kate.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet and WENN.

I feel as if Kate Winslet’s super-fans will issue a fatwa against me if I even utter one less-than-glowing word about her at any moment. Luckily for them, I don’t have any big problems with Kate’s appearance last night at the Cesar Awards in France. The Cesars are like the French Oscars, and I always forget that the Cesars are held really close to the Oscars too. Kate wore this Jenny Packham gown that makes her look like she got a boob job – which I’m sure she hasn’t. I’m just saying, the cut of the gown is good enough where I’m sure some French women were like, “Girl, get out of here with your bolt-ons!” (If someone could translate that into French, I would be much obliged.) The one bad thing about the dress is that it looked really, really heavy. It’s not beading, though – those are sequins. So maybe it’s not that heavy. As for Kate’s face… sigh… I’m not even going to start.

Kate was at the Cesars because she was given an honorary career-achievement award. In previous years, honorary Cesars have been given to Quentin Tarantino, Meryl Streep, Spike Lee, Jean-Luc Godard and Ingrid Bergman, to name just a few. So Kate’s in good company there, although I hate it when women in their 30s receive “lifetime achievement” awards. Winslet still has decades left in her career, y’all. Give it to her when she’s in her 60s.

Oh, and Kate brought her boyfriend/fiancé (?) as her date. Ned Rocknroll got all dressed up to be Kate’s escort. Ugh. This man/boy. He’s like the British equivalent of facially-challenged Casper Smart. I don’t even think Ned’s attractive in the least. I’m also including a photo of Ned & Kate’s arrival in Paris. He just travels with her, does whatever she wants. I’m guessing that she’s paying for everything too – don’t even start with “his family is rich!” His family IS rich. He is not. He married rich, he’s divorcing rich, and he’s jumping-off rich. He’s a golddigging man-child with a sketchy hairline.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.

Kate Winslet began dating Ned RocknRoll in mid-to-late September. It’s thought that she and Ned became acquainted (“boned”) during that trip to Necker Island, in which Kate saved the life of Richard Branson’s mother. Kate was on the island with her piece at the time, model Louis Dowler, and soon after the trip, Louis was jettisoned and Ned came to stay. That all happened within, like, a week. Incidentally, Ned’s single status was in question at the time too – he was still technically married to his wife Eliza, and Eliza wanted to reconcile but Ned was all “No, I’ve got a Winslet now.” So Eliza and Ned’s divorce is going through, I guess. So now that Ned is almost technically single, and now that Ned and Kate have been together for two months, what is their future together? Sources say “marriage”. Sources say Kate thinks Ned Rocknroll is her “soulmate”.

Will the third time be the charm for twice-divorced Kate Winslet? Her romance with Ned Rocknroll has moved so fast since they first clicked in August, and now Kate has installed him in her NYC home, an insider tells Star – and friends expect an engagement announcement soon!

“Kate says she’s found her soulmate,” says the insider, who notes that Kate’s daughter Mia and son Joe are also wild about Ned, 33. “She wants to be his wife, and he’s keen on the idea.”

Once hitch: Ned’s divorce from his estranged spouse, Eliza, is still pending. But he’s already treating Kate like part of his family – which includes his billionaire uncle Richard Branson.

Says the insider, “Kate and Ned are spending Christmas on Branson’s Necker Island with his relatives.”

[From Star Magazine, print edition]

I’m just… disappointed. Kate could do better than some dude who is famous for having a rich uncle, and for changing his name to NED ROCKNROLL. This is Kate’s second bad boyfriend in a row – I didn’t care for her model boy-toy either, he seemed vapid and dull. Despite what I think of Kate in regards to plastic surgery (she’s had some and she lies about it, which makes me kind of hate her a little bit), she’s a catch. She’s beautiful, talented, funny, smart, and she deserves a good man. And I don’t believe Ned Rocknroll is a good dude. At all. I think he’s her K-Fed. And shouldn’t Kate be smarter than this?

Photos courtesy of Fame & WENN.

Kate Winslet has been dating a hipster douche named Ned Rocknroll for about two months. You may think it’s harsh to label him as such, but he just happens to be married (he just filed for divorce, but still the timeline is sketchy) and to have changed his name to “Ned Rocknroll.” Even if he did that on a whim when he was young and stupid, changing your name is not like getting a tattoo. You can change it back. Mr. Rocknroll is the nephew of Virgin billionaire Richard Branson and has some job working for his uncle on that Virgin Galactic commercial spaceflight venture that we always seem to be hearing about that never seems to go anywhere.

As part of his job, Rocky and Kate went to the opening ceremony for a spaceport in New Mexico from which the Virgin spaceflights will launch at some point, they’re saying next year but I doubt it. The thing that bugged me was that this spaceport, which cost $209 million, was paid for by our taxes. I guess I shouldn’t care that we don’t have a manned space program anymore, since we’re making ports to enable space flights for the select few that can afford them, or who are high profile enough to get publicity for Virgin by showing up. Like Kate Winslet! Oh I should get the stick out of my ass, the government pays for airports they may as well pay for spaceports. Way of the future and all that. Here’s the story from People:

Looks like she’s part of the family!

Kate Winslet was on the arm of her new boyfriend, Ned Rocknroll, at Monday’s grand opening of his Uncle Richard Branson’s commercial spaceport in New Mexico.

The couple, who have been linked since meeting in August at Branson’s Necker Island home, were photographed at the opening ceremony, during which Branson repelled from a balcony and swigged champagne, the Associated Press reports.

The British billionaire was launching Spaceport America in a remote New Mexico desert. It’s the site from which he plans to stage his commercial space tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, which employs Ned.

Winslet, 35, and Rocknroll, who legally changed his name from Ned Abel Smith, 33, also have been spotted together in London.

[From People]

And here’s more on the spaceport, from the AP:

Before getting to enter the hangar, the crowd was treated to a flyover by WhiteKnightTwo, the mothership that one day will help take space tourists on suborbital flights.

The $209 million taxpayer-financed spaceport will be a launch station for people and payloads on the rocket ships being developed for Virgin Galactic.

With custom metal paneling and massive panes of glass, the state-of-the-art terminal rises from the desert floor to face the nearly 2-mile concrete runway.

The building will house Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft, mission control and a preparation area for travelers.

It was six years ago that Virgin Galactic and New Mexico officials reached an agreement to build the spaceport. Officials said the completion of the terminal and hangar marks another major milestone that brings the dream of rocketing tourists into space closer to reality.

Still, the question many are asking is when the first ships will launch from Spaceport America. It was Branson who once predicted the maiden passenger flight would take off in 2007.

Branson acknowledged the wait in an interview Monday. He and his two children will be among the first to fly, and he said he wants to ensure he can bring them home safely.

“We want to be sure we’ve really tested the craft through and through before turning it over to the astronauts who bought tickets to go up,’’ he said. “If it takes a bit longer, we’ll take a little bit longer.’’

Commercial service will start up after the company gets a license from the Federal Aviation Administration. NASA has already signed a $4.5 million contract with the company for up to three chartered research flights.

Tickets for rides aboard WhiteKnightTwo cost $200,000. The 2 ½-hour flights will include about five minutes of weightlessness and views of Earth that until now only astronauts have been able to experience.

Like development of the spacecraft, construction of the 110,152-square-foot terminal and hangar facility has been complicated. There were delays, building code problems, contractor disputes and costly change orders.

[From AP via Boston.com]

Well I guess they’ll go into space eventually. I’m predicting 2015 even though the spacecraft is supposedly ready at this point. Kate and Rocky will be broken up by then, but maybe she’ll score tickets to the maiden voyage before that happens. $200k is nothing to scoff at.

And here’s Kate and Rocky at the real airport in San Francisco over the weekend. He carries her bags, I’ll give him that.

Photo credit: WENN and Fame

Here are some photos of Kate Winslet and her relatively new piece, Ned RockNRoll. That’s seriously his legal name – he changed it a few years ago. Ned now travels everywhere with his lover, Kate. They were loved up in London, and she brought him with her to Shanghai, and these are photos of Kate and Ned arriving in San Francisco. They’re all hand-holdy and love-gazey. Ugh. Ned is Richard Branson’s nephew, and the situation around his “single” status is slightly complicated – it was widely reported that he was married when he and Kate first got together, more than a month ago. The marriage thing is weird, though – when he and Kate first got together, he was “separated” from his heiress wife Eliza, but his wife wanted him back and she wanted to work on their marriage. They had only been married for two years or so too – and Ned JUST filed for divorce, according to his wife. Eliza Pearson told The Telegraph: “The decree absolute should come through soon, maybe this month.” Here’s more:

Eliza Pearson and Ned separated after just 20 months. Winslet’s friends say she did not begin her relationship with Ned, 33, who works for his uncle’s space venture Virgin Galactic, until after his decree nisi was granted on August 10.

“Kate would never become involved with a married man,” says one of her chums. “Ned’s wife left him and he was very upset. Kate didn’t get to know him until the decree nisi had gone through.”

Pearson, 23, does not dispute this version of events. “I broke up with Ned,” she tells me. “I won’t disclose the reason, but the split was very amicable. We’re still the best of friends. I’m not seeing anyone else.”

The heiress, whose family’s wealth is estimated to be more than £1 billion, declines to comment on his relationship with Winslet. Last Sunday, I reported that Rocknroll had bought a vintage love locket for the 36-year-old star of Titanic that cost thousands of pounds.

“They are very serious about each other,” says another of Winslet’s friends. The couple have, however, tried to avoid being photographed together.

Confusingly, Pearson declared in July: “I’ve changed my mind about divorce. I am hoping this will turn out to be more of a break than a total separation, because the longer we are apart the more it’s making me realise how much I miss him.”

She added: “It went wrong, but it’s not as if it was a shotgun wedding – we’d been together for four years. I have never stopped loving him and we are soulmates – that doesn’t come along very often.”

[From The Telegraph]

Really, Kate? This is the best you can do? Granted, I think this guy might have some hidden talents – he pulled a billionaire heiress and now one of the most famous actresses in the world, and he doesn’t seem to have any job – or maybe he has the kind of career where he can just follow his ladies around. What‘s that job? Boy-toy to an Oscar winning sugar mama? Seriously, what does he do? I have no idea. Oh, well. Whatever makes her happy. I get the feeling Kate is still wanting easy, uncomplicated relationships, but this guy is making my Sketchy Radar ping.

Photos courtesy of Fame.