I love validate. It takes a bit of getting used to the options, but it's great. I attach a custom attribute to any items i want validated with simple rules, then validate does the rest.
A rough example:
<input id="email" name="email" type="text" validation="required:true,
email:true" />
<label class="error" for="email">Any error messages will go here...</
label>
$('#form-1').validate()
