A BRIDE-TO-BE may take legal action against her electricity supplier after a fault left her without power for more than 48 hours - ruining hundreds of pounds of food bought for her wedding.

Carrol Dickinson, from Evenwood, County Durham, says her wedding plans have been thrown into chaos after a weekend without power which saw her and her fiancee, Robert Little, struggle to look after her four young children.

The pair are planning to marry on Saturday and have arranged a celebration in nearby Shildon in the evening.

Miss Dickinson, 31, had to throw out about £150 worth of food after her freezer stopped working and meat, prawns, pastries and cakes began to defrost.

She also says that she has lost money because she had to take time off work to wait for an engineer to fix her problem.

The problem arose after her energy supplier, EDF, changed the credit key box at her house after the previous one broke three weeks ago.

EDF told Miss Dickinson that a key which would allow her to add credit to her account would follow in the post, but one never arrived.

On Saturday, she returned to her house to find there was no electricity.

The part-time supermarket worker said she rang her supplier at least 20 times between Saturday and Monday to get power restored before an engineer eventually came out on Monday afternoon at about 3.30pm.

"It's been terrible, absolutely terrible," said Miss Dickinson.

"I've only recently moved to the village, so I don't know anyone well enough to go and stay at their house, so we've just had to get by.

"My family have all rallied round and chipped in to pay for a caterer for the wedding. I was going to do the food myself but I can't now and I couldn't afford to hire a caterer."

Yesterday, EDF Energy said that although Miss Dickinson rang customer services, she did not let them know she was without electricity, only that she had no credit key. "We would like to apologise on behalf of EDF Energy to Ms Dickinson for any distress caused," said a spokesman."The customer did not advise EDF Energy that they were without electricity on Saturday or Sunday, only Monday. When the customer called on Monday, we arranged for an engineer to visit."

Despite EDF's explanation, Miss Dickinson said last night that she had still not received her credit key.