After searching and experimenting for 2 days I relent. What I'd like to do is manually wire up injected html with jquery validation. I'm getting a simple string array back from the server and creating a select with the strings as options. The static fields on the form are validating fine. I've been trying the following: var dates = $("<select id='ShiftDate' data-val='true' data-val-required='Please select a date'>"); dates.append("<option value=''>-Select a Date-</option>"); for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++) { dates.append("<option value='" + data[i] + "'>" + data[i] + "</option>"); } $("fieldset", addShift).append($("<p>").append("<label for='ShiftDate'>Shift Date</label>\r").append(dates).append("<span class='field-validation-valid' data-valmsg-for='ShiftDate' data-valmsg-replace='true'></span>")); // I tried the code below as well instead of adding the data-val attributes and span manually with no luck dates.rules("add", { required: true, messages: { required: "Please select a date" } }); // Thought this would do it when I came across several posts but it didn't $.validator.unobtrusive.parse(dates.closest("form")); I know I could create a view model ,decorate it with a required attribute, create a SelectList server-side and send that, but it's more of a "how would I do this" situation now. Can anyone shed light on why the above code wouldn't work as I expect? -chad