DJ Jazzy Jeff Speaks On Getting Hitched, Advice From Will Smith

On July 30, hip-hop turntablist Jeffery “Jazzy Jeff” Townes and his fiancé Lynette Jackson were married on the island of Jamaica. The normally private one half of the pioneering rap duo Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince explains why his wedding was the most important day of his life and says the best marriage advice he received came from longtime friend and collaborator Will Smith

I got married because it was the right time and the right thing to do. Lynette and I had been together for three years. This is the person I want to spend the rest of my life with so we got married in Jamaica and the wedding was a really good size. It was all of our close friends and family. We did it off the radar because we just wanted it to be about family. Your wedding day is supposed to be the most important day of your life, so we wanted to share that with the most important people in our lives.

We took a lot of advice from other married couples. The main piece of advice my wife and I received? You have to make your wedding day all about you. So many of our friends would tell us, “If we had a chance to do it all over again, we would have picked the food we wanted to eat or picked the place where we wanted to hold our wedding.”

Will [Smith] was one of the main people who were there for support. One of the things that he said to me that I thought was really insightful was, 'So many people are there to celebrate your day, that every hour or so during the ceremony you should grab your bride, sit down somewhere, and spend 10 minutes with your wife-to-be.' It’s like a huddle [Laughs]…the two of you break and then you give yourself to your family and friends. Every hour my wife and I found each other wherever we were at and just looked at each other and said, 'Wow, this is really great.'

Unfortunately, most of the time, friends and family only get together when people pass away. We don’t treasure our friends and our family when they are here. So our wedding was a really good occasion to get everybody together. We wanted to take a million and one pictures and savor every moment of it because you don’t know if these people will ever be together again.

All of the old school Philly crew was there. Will, J.O., Charlie…it was pretty much my people. It was crazy to stand there and soak it all in with my friends. Will and I would look at each other during the ceremony and laugh like, Can you believe this??? We are just two kids from West Philadelphia who followed our dreams. It doesn’t get better than this."—As told to Keith Murphy