Nikki Bella's 4-Week Crash Wedding Triggered a 'Panic Attack' for Her and Drove Artem Chigvintsev to Tears
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Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev didn't waste any time planning their wedding in Paris — but that four-week turnaround proved to be stressful.
During Thursday's premiere of the E! special Nikki Bella Says I Do, Bella, 39, and Chigvintsev, 40, openly discussed their decision to get married within a month and expressed their individual concerns.
"Everything that we've wanted in Napa, that we've dreamt of, none of that is happening," said Bella, who had originally explored the idea of planning a wedding in Northern California. "I had a little bit of a panic attack last night. I just started to feel like everything that we're trying to do is not happening or it's wrong, and then I start to get anxiety. Your parents can't come. Nana can't come. We're not doing things we like. I don't even know how you feel wearing my dress."
"What do you mean wearing 'my dress?'" the Dancing With the Stars pro asked in response.
"Well I told you… I would just wear that," Bella said, referring to the wedding dress she originally planned to wear for her nuptials to ex-fiancé John Cena. "Because how do you even get a wedding dress within [four weeks]?"
Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Artem Chigvintsev and Nikki Bella
RELATED: Nikki Bella Says Exchanging Vows Was Her Favorite Moment from Parisian Wedding to Artem Chigvintsev
Chigvintsev wasn't bothered by the dress decision, telling his wife-to-be: "That's the least thing on my mind. If you're happy with it, you're happy with it."
"But I mean, my biggest issue is I'm not planning on getting married again and I want to make sure my parents can be there, and my family can be there and my brother," he explained. "They've never met Matteo [the couple's 2-year-old son] and it'd be the perfect way of them meeting our son. I'm not thrilled with our options over here … I think the one thing on my mind all the time is my parents."
Bella was in agreement, telling him, "I just really want your parents to be there."
Chigvintsev went on to explain that with the current situation in Russia, there was "no way possible his parents could make" the wedding in the United States.
"When you actually say it out loud, it makes it even more real," he told cameras. "It's been challenging because you feel like you've been cut off from that world which has been really frustrating. Sometimes I feel helpless."
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"I can't believe my parents haven't even held my son," he told Bella. "It's not normal. It's ludicrous that that's the case. God forbid, if my parents never meet my son in person, that would be the most devastating thing. You can never get that back."
Speaking to cameras, Bella acknowledged how difficult the wedding situation was becoming for the pair.
"The one thing I've realized in being a fiancée to him, Artem is definitely a realist," she told cameras. "Artem is so close to his family, but yet they're so far away. Artem doesn't have a lot of people here in America. It makes me so emotional because I'm all about family. Family is number one in my life. My son doesn't get to meet his grandparents. I'm starting to realize that getting married in Napa Valley is not going to work."
"My parents live their lives for my brother and I," Chigvintsev said while fighting back tears. "You're supposed to grow up and take care of them. I feel so hopeless in that sense. I can't even send them money anymore."
Eventually, the duo decided to abandon their Napa Valley plans altogether and shift their wedding to Paris, where they got engaged in November 2019.
"All the signs have shown us that Napa isn't right. We're compromising everything and I get it, we're a few weeks out. But then I started thinking, we don't even have the venue we want in Napa so maybe we just go elope somewhere," Bella said. "But maybe somewhere your parents can go. Somewhere where we love, somewhere were you proposed. Would you do Paris?"
Added Chigvintsev: "It clicked that we should do it in Paris."
RELATED VIDEO: Nikki Bella and Artem Chigvintsev Are Married: 'We Said I Do'
Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the premiere, Bella opened up about their decision to make a drastic 180 on wedding plans.
"I don't know why I thought it was going to be just peachy and easy," she said. "No, it never is. It was stressful. I don't know. I sometimes crave when things are spontaneous and I think not knowing what can happen. It was very stressful, and I think you see that in my face a lot. But there is some magic about it, because I think you were only forced to feel like, 'Okay, whatever's meant to be will be.'"
"You actually get to see that happen towards the end in the venue that we ended up getting and all these different things," she added. "It was crazy how everything just came into play. It just made me know that we made the right decision. I don't advise it to anyone to plan a wedding in a week because that's really hard. You may be disappointed, but we weren't. We loved it."
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Nikki Bella Says I Do airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on E!
