East Meadow pair engages in 'Wedding Wars'

As Lindenhurst's Pat Benatar once sang, love is a battlefield. This is almost literally true on VH1's "Wedding Wars," premiering Monday at 9 p.m. The competition-elimination show features 12 engaged couples, including one from Long Island, who battle each other while bivouacking in a bug-infested rain forest. The prize: a dream destination wedding.

The Long Islanders are Sofia Mikromastoras and Frankie Rosati, both 30, of East Meadow. (Rosati has lived there since 2004; Mikromastoras moved in with him from Ronkonkoma last year.)

"It was insane, absolutely insane," the animated Mikromastoras recalls of their discovering that the show, with no warning beforehand, was having them camp out in a Hawaiian outback for who-knows-how-long. "When they finally revealed the twist, my heart stopped. I was, like, dead for five minutes! I think I still have gray hair."

It wasn't just the prospect of living outdoors that freaked her a bit, but her phobia of "spiders and creepy crawlies," she says.

"I knew Sofia had to face her biggest fear and I knew I had to take care of not just myself but her as well," says Rosati.

"You didn't have to take care of me that much," says Mikromastoras. "You are my rock," she adds lovingly, "but I learned to kill spiders on my own."

The two had met at Adelphi University and dated for six months before breaking up on good terms. They reconnected 10 years later and fell in love.

Today Rosati, who flipped houses in his early 20s, works in sales, while Mikromastoras recently began a job in human resources. As for East Meadow, it grew on her. "I always was a Suffolk girl," she says. "Never thought I'd be a Nassau girl!"