A Bella bride.
Nikki Bella was joined by her fiancé Artem Chigvintsev on this week's brand new episode of The Bellas Podcast, and the professional dancer not only recounted the day the two welcomed their first child, Matteo Chigvintsev, but also gave a major update about their wedding plans (and how Matteo himself will be involved!).
As Total Bellas fans surely recall, Artem proposed to Nikki during their November 2019 trip to France, and in January 2020, the former WWE star announced she was pregnant. Then, of course, came the COVID-19 pandemic.
The worldwide shutdown thwarted any plans they may of had pre-coronavirus, and as the couple revealed on Wednesday, they'll continue to delay saying "I Do" until conditions improve.
The reveal came in response to a fan question about wedding details, and after Artem slyly teased that "you will found out more on Total Bellas," he added, "We're looking forward to it. We just want to make sure that, you know, it's not going to be plastic walls everywhere around every single person."
"At the end of the day, it's a celebration and not just a thing you attend for the sake of attending," Artem explained. "And both of us feel the same way about that. Once we can figure it out, what that would look like, I think it's going to start moving quickly."
As Nikki put it, she and her husband-to-be want their wedding guests "to bump and grind...not be six feet apart."
Plus, they'd love for Matteo to be involved somehow, and that's a little hard to do when he's barely a month old!
"It would be kind of awesome for him...[to be] present in a sense," Artem said, with Nikki suggesting they wait until Matteo could walk down the aisle.
"Well, walking down the aisle means it's gonna take a while," he responded.
"I don't know," Nikki told Artem. "The way he is, he might be walking...Brie and I walked at 9 months! He's crazy freakishly strong."
Perhaps a career in wrestling is in the cards? That could certainly be the case for Brie Bella and Daniel Bryan's (born Bryan Danielson) second child, Buddy Danielson, who was born just one day after Matteo.
"The fact that Matteo will have a best friend for the rest of his life—that's something that you don't get unless it's your legit blood brother," Artem expressed. "But that's the whole cherry on the cake, that they will have each other. They will hang out together and be best friends. Just having that in Matteo's life...like what's to come, I'm super excited, I'm super pumped for that."
Nikki echoed Artem's sentiment, saying that she's "so happy that Matteo will have, honestly, a twin brother for life."
"He'll always get to go through things with Buddy," she added, giving a shout-out to Brie and Bryan's daughter. "And to be honest, he has an older sister! Birdie's gonna keep these boys in check and I can't wait to watch it."
As for now, the couple noted that they're just enjoying their time at home with their son.
Born on July 31 after 20+ hours of labor—which Artem recalled in-detail on The Bellas Podcast—Matteo is already good at getting what he wants from his parents.
As his dad put it, "Trust me, when that bottom lip rumbles and the cry starts, you're just willing to do anything to stop that."
"And when I say anything to stop that, if someone would say, 'Chop your hand off,' you would chop your hand off," he said, laughing.
Nikki pointed out that Artem and Matteo quickly formed a strong bond, and that the newborn often falls asleep for hours on his chest.
"When people ask, 'How does it feel to be a dad?' Nothing I could've expected. It's better in such a different way," Artem expressed. "It's like unless you actually experience it, there's just no way you can explain with words."
Artem revealed that he cried when Matteo first entered the world: "He's crying, you can hear the first noise that he makes. Obviously, I got crazy emotional."
"[I] looked at Nicole, she had this massive relief like, 'Oh my god, this has actually happened,'" Artem said, also expressing how "proud" he was of his fiancée. "It did make me love Nicole more."
The family of three recently relocated to Los Angeles, where Artem is currently working on Dancing With the Stars.
His return to the show wasn't the only reason for the move from Phoenix, Arizona, though. According to the couple, there were a number of factors, including the weather in Arizona.
Hear what Artem had to say about the upcoming season of DWTS in addition to fatherhood, the hilarious "rehearsal" car ride he and Nikki did and more on the full episode of The Bellas Podcast.