The first validation to be run is for required="true" for which you haven't (that I can see from your code snippets) specified an override. You can override the required message using JSF 1.2: <h:inputText id="firstName" value="#{checkoutCart.bean.firstName}" required="true" requiredMessage="#{message['foo.required']}" /> Maybe icefaces has something similar. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4100289#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...