‘Like walking onto a film set’: Couple’s stunning wedding photos under the Storm Ophelia red sky

A bride and groom had been hoping to give their wedding a glitzy Great Gatsby feel but ended up with something closer to a Spielberg sci-fi movie due to the rare red sky weather phenomenon.

Colette and Tristan Cooper had carefully themed their nuptials around the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel yet as they stepped out of their venue on Monday the skies had turned a dark red hue due to Storm Ophelia.

Fortunately this combined with the light fog around their Ellingham Hall venue, in Northumberland, to bathe its grounds in an amber mist, creating a unique backdrop for their wedding photos.

“We had absolutely no idea it was going to be like that,” Colette, 33, told the Newcastle Chronicle.

“I’d been keeping a check on the forecast and it looked like it was going to be a bit cloudy and then the sun would come out in the afternoon. I couldn’t believe it when I walked outside - it was like walking onto a film set.

“There was all this mist and low lying fog and the sun was a really strange colour. There were all these crazy conditions coming together at once. It was really spooky but really atmospheric - so striking.

Colette, a clinical scientist who works for the NHS at Newcastle’s Centre for Life, has been with architect Tristan, 30, for four year and the pair live in from Scotswood, Newcastle. They had been planning the wedding since August last year when Mr Cooper proposed while they were on holiday in Budapest.

They couldn’t have foreseen that their big day would coincide with the unusual phenomenon, which forced some parts of the country to turn on streetlamps in the middle of the day.

The red sun was caused by Storm Ophelia’s winds pulling up Saharan dust that was then reflected and refracted in longer wavelengths, giving a red appearance to the sky.

The couple’s photographer, Sean Elliott, 40, said he had noticed it was becoming dark outside during the ceremony so he was keen to get the confetti shot done straight after the pair had exchanged vows.

The first inkling he got of the ethereal scene unfolding outside was when he overheard comments startled guests were making as they filed out of the venue.

Mr Elliott said: “I could hear people leaving and saying things like ‘wow, this is weird’ and ‘what's happened?’ Someone even said ‘has Trump actually pushed the button?’ It did feel like how images of a nuclear fallout would be.”

The Newcastle-based photographer, who has shot over 800 weddings, said he was keen to capitalise on the rare spectacle and hurried through the group shots so he could get the couple away into the grounds.

He added: “I commented to the bride Colette that the weather felt like Spielberg had gone to town on set of the Tess of the D'Urbervilles movie’. She replied how much she loved that book.”

The newlyweds, who are now on their honeymoon in Italy for two weeks, were delighted with results of their wedding shoot.

Mrs Cooper added: “I think it definitely enhanced it. Everyone kept telling us how unique it was, and even though we didn’t have sun it was really special. The pictures are amazing - we couldn’t believe it when we saw them.”