AceShowbiz - Veteran British actress Juliet Stevenson is planning to wed her longtime boyfriend, Hugh Brody, to add a bright spot to a terrible year for the couple.

The "Truly, Madly, Deeply" star has been dating the anthropologist for 30 years and now she insists the time is right for them to exchange vows, eight months after the sudden death of Brody's son.

"I want to stand up in front of the world, even if there are only six people in the room, and say, 'This is my person, and we've been through a huge amount, and I love him more than ever,' " Juliet tells MailOnline.

"Losing a child, it's so frightening. So much of the year has been about survival, the whole country watching these terrible statistics nightly on the news. But the young people were supposed to be OK."

The actress and Brody share two children together - Rosalind, 27, and Gabriel, 20 - and she admits she is "ridiculously soppy" about her 78-year-old boyfriend, adding, "I'm very glad to be with somebody who's not in the industry because I'm a bit of an obsessive. I get very submerged in a piece of work, and if I lived with another actor, it would be a bit suffocating."

While she is now keen on tying the knot, Stevenson has previously voiced her thoughts on the down side of marriage. "I grew up seeing what incredible restraints marriage imposes on women in certain situations. I felt my mum sometimes metaphorically beating at the walls," she shared.