WWW- Georgia cops yesterday warned runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks they’ll slap her with a felony charge if they find out she planned her escape – with a bus ticket to freedom purchased in advance.

Officials initially said the disgraced bride-to-be would get off scot-free despite sparking a nationwide manhunt when she disappeared from her home in Duluth on Tuesday.

She finally surfaced in New Mexico on Friday night, the day before her lavish wedding was to have taken place.

But now she could face up to five years in jail for spinning her desperate tale – especially if it was premeditated, said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter.

Investigators were looking into reports that the 32-year-old nurse had bought her ticket a week in advance under an assumed name in her hometown of Gainesville, about 40 miles from Duluth.

The former Chicago Marathoner, who lives with fiancé John Mason in Duluth, had told him she was going out jogging Tuesday. But she jumped on a Greyhound bus instead, first heading to Las Vegas and then to New Mexico.

A Greyhound spokeswoman confirmed that the bus company had been helping with the investigation, but refused to comment on when Wilbanks bought her ticket or if it was one-way.

The desperate search for the missing woman was called off Friday night when she dialed 911 from a pay phone in Albuquerque.

She told authorities and Mason that she had been abducted at gunpoint by a man and a woman and then dumped in Albuquerque.

She later confessed that she had made up the story because she had become scared about her impending marriage and “needed some time alone.”

Wilbanks, who cut her hair short while on the road, told investigators she had at least $140 on her when she left Georgia on Tuesday night.

Porter said, “I think there is a possibility that there could be charges based on the telephone call she made here to Duluth.

“She gave information to the police here that she had been abducted; she called her fiancé’s home, and he kept her on the phone until the chief could get to the house, and then she spoke to the chief of police.”

Porter said he was considering two charges: the misdemeanor of making a false report of a crime, or the felony of lying to public officials. The latter carries a five-year jail term.

“If it was premediated, I’m going to tend toward prosecution. If it was panic and spur of the moment, I’m going to tend away from it,” he said.

Yesterday, Wilbanks’ relatives and the 32-year-old Mason and his family refused to comment on the bride-to-be’s flight or how the pair may have been reunited.

“John’s got a lot of thinking to do, and whatever he decides to do, we are going to back him up on it,” said his uncle, Miles Mason.

“He’s holding up well.”

Mason’s father, who was stopped by reporters outside the couple’s Duluth home, refused to reveal whether they were now in hiding together.

A cousin, Miles Mason IV, 22, who was to have been one of 14 groomsmen at the lavish bash, said, “Everything is just on hold.”

Wilbanks’ mother and relatives who live in Gainesville also refused to talk to reporters.

After being picked up in Albuquerque, Wilbanks confessed to the FBI that on Tuesday, under stress over her wedding, she took a taxi to the Greyhound station at Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

From there, she embarked on a two-day bus trip to Las Vegas and then hopped on a second bus to Albuquerque, where she arrived Friday afternoon

“She said she was scared and needed some time alone,” said Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz.

Wilbanks flew back to Georgia on Saturday, and there were no relatives at the airport to greet her. Still, her stepfather and an uncle did fly to Albuquerque to escort her home, authorities said. In Atlanta, she was picked up in a squad car on the tarmac – with a small blanket covering her head.

Shortly before boarding a flight home from New Mexico Wilbanks made a statement for the media Рvia a flight attendant Рin which she said she had spoken with her fianc̩, according to CNN.

The wedding was not off, she said, just postponed.

The Rev. Alan Jones, who was to perform the ceremony on Saturday, said the family had no idea that Wilbanks had fears about the wedding. He added that Mason bore no hostility toward his fiancée.

“I have never met such a strong person in all my life,” Jones said. “He’s an incredible man.”

Despite courting the media while his wife to be was missing, Mason has not spoken publicly since Wilbanks said she lied about being abducted.