When She Married Artem Chigvintsev
WWE Hall of Famer Nikki Bella had a highly-public relationship, engagement, and breakup with fellow WWE star John Cena. The pair got engaged at WrestleMania 33 in 2017 and had their relationship on full display during the Total Divas and Total Bellas reality shows. However, the couple broke off the engagement in April 2018, just one month before their wedding. Bella is now married and has a son with Dancing With The Stars‘ Artem Chigvinsev, and their marriage from this past August is being shown in the new E! miniseries Nikki Bella Says I Do.
In a new interview with US Weekly, Bella revealed that the wedding dress she wore for her ceremony with Chigvintsev was the same one she chose for her planned wedding with Cena.
“I had the moment with that dress … when I saw it. It was all something that I dreamed of. I went back and forth with that decision. For me, it [reflects] how I stand as a strong woman; I was like, wait, why should I not wear what I love? Because of my past? It just didn’t make sense to me,” Bella said.
Bella has been incredibly open about why her relationship with Cena fell apart but has consistently spoken highly of him in the years since then. She even thanked him during her WWE Hall of Fame acceptance speech.
“He helped me be that fearless side and showed me a part of that world that I never saw before,” she added. “I think just because you have breakups or whatever it may be, doesn’t mean you can’t thank those people and just truly be so grateful for the help that they had.”
“I didn’t think anything about it because when you’re in those moments at the Hall of Fame, you look at your career, and you’re like, ‘Who was there, who helped me along the way?'” Bella said in a separate interview with US Weekly in 2021. “So much of the time, people will talk about themselves, and for me, I look at my career, and I know that wasn’t just because of me. It was Brie [Bella], the Bella army, the producers, all the people that believed in me, and John was a big part of that.”
