Why is the first element always blank in my Rails multi-select, using an embedded array?
In Rails 4: You will be able to pass :include_hidden option. https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/5414/files As a quick fix for now: you can use right now in your model: before_validation do |model| model.subset_array.reject!(&:blank?) if model.subset_array end This will just delete all blank values at model level.