 <p>Give an id to the div surrounding the birthday tags:</p> <pre><code>&lt;div id="required"&gt; Birthday: &lt;select name="birthday_day" class="required"&gt; &lt;option value=""&gt;Day&lt;/option&gt; &lt;option value="1" &gt;1&lt;/option&gt; &lt;option value="2" &gt;2&lt;/option&gt; &lt;/select&gt; &lt;select name="birthday_month" class="required"&gt; &lt;option value=""&gt;Month&lt;/option&gt; &lt;option value="1" &gt;January&lt;/option&gt; &lt;/select&gt; &lt;select name="birthday_year" class="required"&gt; &lt;option value=""&gt;Year&lt;/option&gt; &lt;option value="1900" &gt;1900&lt;/option&gt; &lt;/select&gt; &lt;/div&gt; </code></pre> <p>Use the code below to apply a red border if any of the select tags are not selected:</p> <pre><code>$('#doRegister').click(function(){ var a = $('select[name="birthday_day"]').val(); var b = $('select[name="birthday_month"]').val(); var c = $('select[name="birthday_year"]').val(); if(a == '' || b == '' || c == '') { $('div#required').css('border', '1px solid f60f60'); } else { $('div#required').css('border', 'none'); } }); </code></pre> <p>This,of course, avoids the use of the validator plugin that you're using</p>