title: How can you manually render a form field with its initial value set?
body: <p>I'm trying to render a form's fields manually so that my designer colleagues could manipulate the input elements within the HTML instead of struggling in Python source.</p>
  
  <p>ie. Instead of declaring form fields like this...</p>
  
  <pre><code>            {{ form.first_name }}   
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>.. I actually do ...</p>
  
  <pre><code>            &lt;label for="id_first_name"&gt;Your name:&lt;/label&gt;
              &lt;input type="text" value="{{  form.first_name.somehow_get_initial_value_here }}" name="first_name" id="id_first_name" class="blabla" maxlength="30" &gt;
              {% if form.first_name.errors %}&lt;span&gt;*** {{ form.first_name.errors|join:", " }}&lt;/span&gt;{% endif %}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Problem is that there seems to be no way to get the initial value of the field in the second method. <strong>{{ form.first_name }}</strong> statement does render the input element with the proper initial value but somehow there is nothing like <strong>{{ form.first_name.initial_value }}</strong> field when you want to render the form manually.</p>