jquery - Append autocomplete elements only once

Question

I have a problem with my autocomplete script. It works fine everywhere except IE8. When the list is large the whole page becomes unresponsive and CPU usage goes up to almost 100% in IE8.

_renderItem = function(ul, item) {
        var html = "";
        if (item.NoDataFound) {
            html = "No data found";
        } else {
            if (textField.val() != "") {
                html = item.DisplayName.replace(new RegExp("(" + preg_quote(textField.val()) + ")", 'gi'), "<strong>$1</strong>"); // suggest message & Highlight matching part
            } else {
                html = item.DisplayName;
            }
        }
        return $("<li><a>" + html + "</a></li>")
            .data("item.autocomplete", item)
            .appendTo(ul);
    };

Could the problem be the appendTo(ul) line, that appends every item to the ul individually. Can I somehow append the whole list only once, when the last element is reached for example?