You should look at using HTML::FillInForm to fill out your forms. I use it all the time with HTML::Template with great success.

Just do something like this:

my $q = new CGI();
my $template = new HTML::Template( ... );
my $html = $template->output();

my $fif = new HTML::FillInForm;
my $output = $fif->fill(scalarref => \$html,
                        fobject   => $q);
[download]

That will take your raw HTML, and a CGI query object and find any form fields in your HTML and automatically fill them in (including Select boxes, checkboxes and radio buttons).

Now you don't have to worry about using HTML::Template to fill in your values so your HTML becomes very simple, and your designers will have less <TMPL_VAR> tags to contend with.