Lawrenceville, Ga. ? Instead of cutting out of town, runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks is cutting lawns.

Wearing an orange community service vest and a baseball cap with the slogan “Life is good,” Wilbanks did part of her court-ordered community service Tuesday for lying to police after she ran off before her wedding.

“I’m doing well. … I’m getting there,” a sweating Wilbanks told a throng of reporters and photographers after her mower died in the tall, wet grass. “I need to get back to work. I don’t want to get into trouble.”

But her mower kept sputtering out, prompting her to repeatedly yank on the pull cord to get it started again. After the eighth time, she let out a huge sigh.

In all, Wilbanks was ordered to do 120 hours of service, and she has already completed 24 by scrubbing toilets in probation offices, picking up trash and washing public vehicles.

“She’s a hard worker. She didn’t take advantage of anything. She did more work than most people,” said 17-year-old Michael Powell, who has cleaned bathrooms and offices with Wilbanks while working off his own sentence of 80 hours of community service for an offense he declined to disclose.

When he first met Wilbanks, Powell was one of the few who had no idea who she was.

“I said ‘Whoa, what’s a girl like you having to do 120 hours of community service?’ She said, ‘I told a lie.'”

Runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks mows the lawn of a government building Tuesday in Lawrenceville, Ga. Wilbanks also has been picking up litter, washing public vehicles and cleaning government offices as part of her sentence for lying to police after she ran off days before her scheduled wedding.

“I said, ‘It must have been a pretty big lie,’ and she laughed, saying ‘Haven’t you heard of the runaway bride?”‘

Wilbanks, 32, disappeared four days before her scheduled wedding in April with 600 invited guests. Hundreds of police officers and volunteers – including members of the wedding party – searched for her for three days.

She called her fiance, John Mason, from Albuquerque, N.M., early in the morning of her planned wedding day, claiming to have been abducted and sexually assaulted. She soon recanted her story, saying she fled because of personal issues.

Wilbanks pleaded no contest in June to telling police her phony story. She also was sentenced to two years of probation and ordered to pay $2,550 in restitution to the sheriff’s office that helped with the search.

The nearby city of Duluth, where Wilbanks had lived with her fiance, spent nearly $43,000 to search for her; Wilbanks has repaid $13,249.

Wilbanks has been undergoing mental health treatment. In an interview with Katie Couric shown on NBC in June, Mason said maybe the couple will get married “one day.” “But we don’t know the answer to that question yet,” he added.