help using jquery.validate and jquery.form to submit to Salesforce web2lead without refresh

help using jquery.validate and jquery.form to submit to Salesforce web2lead without refresh

I'm a bit unfamiliar with form submission, and can't quite put this all together. I have a small form that submits via Salesforce web2lead. I want to avoid refreshing the page, or going to a confirmation page on success. I want to submit, and on success, fade out the form and show a success message.

the form tag: 
<form action="https://www.salesforce.com/servlet/servlet.WebToLead?encoding=UTF-8" method="POST" name="emailSignUp" id="emailSignUp">

my validate setup:
// Contact Form Validation
var validator = $("#emailSignUp").validate({
errorElement: "em",
errorContainer: "#form-errors",
  rules: {
    // simple rule, converted to {required:true}
    first_name: "required",
    last_name: "required",
    company: "required",
    country: "required",
    // compound rule
    email: {
      required: true,
      email: true
    }
  },
  messages: {
    first_name: " **",
    last_name: " **",
    company: " **",
    country: " **",
    email: {
      required: " **",
      email: " **"
    }
  }
});

after a successful submit, I want to run this function (hides the form, shows a success message)

var showResponse = function(){ 
      $("#emailSignUp").fadeOut('slow', function(){ 
            $('#successmsgdiv').show(closeSignUp(2000)); 
      }); 
}

Any help would be appreciated!