An event years in the making! Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev tied the knot in August 2022, but their journey to the altar wasn’t easy — and their nuptials happened much later than they originally planned.
The WWE star, 39, and the Dancing With the Stars pro, 40, took fans inside their wedding planning process in their new E! docuseries, Nikki Bella Says I Do, which premiered on Thursday, January 26. “We really wanna be husband and wife,” the “Bellas Podcast” cohost explained in the first episode. “But there’s been a lot of things that have delayed our wedding. First, I got pregnant. That was kind of a big shocker.”
The California native and the ballroom expert welcomed son Matteo, now 2, in July 2020. The little one’s birth took precedence over any event planning, especially because he arrived in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were just trying to figure out how to be parents,” Bella explained. “Then Artem does Dancing With the Stars. That’s actually a lot within two years, if you think about it.” Her husband agreed, adding: “It’s obviously a long time coming, I mean from proposal to where we are right now.”
The duo, who got engaged in November 2019, decided to walk down the aisle last year, but they had a very specific time frame in mind because of their work schedules and Matteo’s upcoming first year of school. After they settled on a late August 2022 date, they had only four weeks to plan the event.
“In my head, it just seemed so perfect, and in my head, I thought it’d be so easy to plan a wedding in four weeks,” the WWE Hall of Famer exclusively told Us Weekly ahead of the show’s premiere. “And I was so wrong. I don’t suggest that anyone plan a wedding that quick, but it was also fun and spontaneous.”
Despite the quick turnaround, the twosome managed to succeed, thanks in part to help from Nikki’s twin sister, Brie Bella, who planned the bridal shower and the bachelorette party. The Incomparable coauthor also helped her sister look at wedding venues in California, and later France after Nikki decided to move the ceremony to Europe.
Planning a wedding in less than a month was obviously stressful, but Nikki and the Russia native weathered the storm. “I’m now fully in a family life,” she told cameras in a confessional interview. “I’m in my most perfect place ever, like where my soul called me to be.”
Part 2 of Nikki Bella Says I Do airs on E! Thursday, February 2, at 9 p.m. ET.
Keep scrolling for the biggest revelations from Nikki Bella Says I Do:
