Entertainment Weekly

Love Boat:

Kate Winslet marries her sweetheart of one year

By Liane Bonin, November 23, 1998

 

Kate Winslet's heart has gone on. The 23-year-old "Titanic" actress plunged into married life with assistant film director Jim Threapleton in a church ceremony in Reading, England, on Sunday. While 150 guests, including such celebrities as Winslet's "Sense and Sensibility" costars Emma Thompson and Greg Wise, were in attendance, the ceremony went mostly undetected by the ever-watchful paparazzi, thanks to the star's recent insistence that the deed would not be done until next year. The couple have been secretly engaged since the summer.

Despite the modest, half-hour ceremony, everybody's favorite Rose didn't hesitate to pull out all the stops with her wedding dress design. Winslet walked down the aisle of the All Saints' Church in an Edwardian pearl-encrusted gown designed by Givenchy. She topped off the outfit with a bindhi-esque pearl droplet on her forehead.

The surprise nuptials come at a significant time in the actress' life. The couple is tying the knot only a year after meeting on the set of the film "Hideous Kinky," and the wedding took place just prior to the first anniversary of the death of Stephen Tredre, the best friend and former lover Winslet once called "the most important thing in my life after my family." Tredre, who dated the teenage Winslet for 4 and 1/2 years before their split in 1995, died of bone cancer last December, just days before the premiere of "Titanic."

While Winslet had refrained from dating since her split from Tredre (except for a three-month fling with actor Rufus Sewell), she didn't hesitate to dive in to a relationship with the 25-year-old Threapleton. "When you know, you know," Winslet told London's Daily Mirror after announcing her engagement. "I knew instantly. I thought, 'Yep, I'll have that.'" Winslet is currently working on "Holy Smoke" with director Jane Campion ("The Piano").