MYSTERY surrounded the whereabouts of a hurricane-hit wedding party from the North-East last night.

Concerned parents Pauline and Barry Bratt have not heard anything in the past 24 hours from their daughter, Lynn, who flew with fiance Gordon Steels to be married in Mexico.

Their wedding should have taken place on Monday, but instead the pair found themselves caught in the path of Hurricane Wilma.

Lynn's parents, of Torquay Avenue, Hartlepool, said last night they were worried sick but had heard from their son, Michael, who flew to Cancun with partner Joanne Saint and their two-year-old son, Aidan, to be at his sister's wedding.

Michael told his parents that he and his family were being flown to Canada, via the Dominican Republic.

His father said he could not understand why they had not just been brought back to the UK.

"It's beyond belief," said Mr Bratt, adding that he had failed to get any help from a Home Office emergency telephone number.

He said one of Lynn's friends, who was to have been a bridesmaid, rang her mother in Hartlepool to say: "I am just happy to be alive."

But another friend got as far as saying: "Mum, we are on the way to the airport" when the line went dead.

Lynn and Gordon's parents are still hoping that they will be home by the weekend and are trying to get a licence to enable them to get married at the register office in Hartlepool.

The bride-to-be's father, an engineer, has to return to work overseas in Kazakhstan on Monday.

Another stranded couple, honeymooners Emma and Simon Irving, from Bellingham, Northumberland, have been told by Thomas Cook staff they are unsure when they will be able to board a flight home.