Kate's last single fling

British beauty Kate Beckinsale was unusually coy as she celebrated her last night out as a single woman.

Kate, who married her director fiancé Len Wiseman yesterday, hit the town on Friday after being smuggled out of her Los Angeles home under a large sheet.

The 30-year-old actress, whose vampire film Van Helsing opened this weekend, giggled as she jumped into the back of a limousine with six girlfriends for her hen night in Beverly Hills. The car had blackedout windows to preserve their privacy and flew a pennant declaring 'Last Night Out'.

One onlooker said: 'There was a blow-up doll in the back. Kate was drinking champagne, wedged among a load of balloons.'

Wearing a low-cut dress, fishnet stockings and a veil, Beckinsale spent the night partying at the famed Chateau Marmont hotel on LA's Sunset Strip. Earlier in the day, friends and family flocked to her home to make preparations, and one assistant was seen leaving with the wedding dress.

Today's ceremony will be tinged with sadness for the star whose father, Porridge actor Richard Beckinsale, died of a heart attack at just 31 in 1979. Her mother Judy Loe and stepfather Roy Battersby are believed to have flown to LA so Roy can walk her down the aisle.

Beckinsale, who shot to fame in Pearl Harbor, met director Wiseman in December 2002 on the set of the movie Underworld.

The pair were going to wed in Las Vegas but changed their plans because of her work commitments. After a 'very quick' honeymoon she

starts work on a film called The Aviator opposite Leonardo DiCaprio.

The actress, who grew up in Chiswick, West London, has a daughter Lily, five, from a previous nineyear relationship with Welsh actor Michael Sheen. She said: 'Lily is very excited about the wedding. She's chosen her flower girl dress and everything. I never thought I could be this happy. But I'm not giving any of the wedding dress details away. You'll have to wait - as will dear Len.'

Beckinsale has had a whirlwind week promoting Van Helsing. In an interview with men's magazine GQ she denied internet rumours that she has had a breast enlargement - but claimed she hates to wear underwear as she finds it 'claustrophobic'.

In another interview, she told how her wedding marked 'a true happiness' after years struggling to cope with the death of her father and bouts of depression and anorexia.

'They say youth is wasted on the young, but it's true,' she said. 'I was miserable, but I now have more enjoyment about everything.

'I was not an attractive child and then, very quickly, people reacted to me differently. I had a hard time with that. You don't want, as a woman, to trade entirely on how you look.

'Now I've fallen in love with somebody who celebrates me every moment of the day and I've become much more comfortable with myself. I really feel now that I'm home free.'