I'm having a problem with elements added with appendTo() not being immediately available in the DOM.

First, I'm reading some data from a JSON file and then appending some html to a div.

    jsonUrl = "js/performers.json";

    $.getJSON(jsonUrl, function(json) {
        $.each(json.performers, function(i, performer) {
            var html = '<div class="performer_mini">';
            html += '<img src="' + performer.thumbnail + '" alt="' + performer.name + '" /><br />';
            html += performer.name + '<br /></div>';
            $(html).appendTo("div#performer_spotlight");
        });
    });

Then I'm calling a random shuffler plugin to show one of the added divs at a time.

$("#performer_spotlight").randomShuffler(".performer_mini", 3000, 3000, 9000);

The random shuffler does the following:

(function($) {
    $.fn.randomShuffler = function(shuffledElements, fadeInTime, fadeOutTime, timeout) {
        fadeInTime = fadeInTime || 3000;
        fadeOutTime = fadeOutTime || 3000;
        timeout = timeout || 9000;

        $(shuffledElements).hide();

        var $old_element;
        var $new_element;
        var old_index = 0;
        var new_index = 0;

        function shuffleElement() {
            $old_element = $new_element;
            old_index = new_index;
            while ($(shuffledElements).length > 0 && old_index == new_index) { // don't display the same element twice in a row
                new_index = Math.floor(Math.random()*$(shuffledElements).length);
            }
            $new_element = $(shuffledElements + ":eq(" + new_index + ")");
            if ($old_element != undefined) {
                $old_element.fadeOut(fadeOutTime, function() {
                    $new_element.fadeIn(fadeInTime);
                });
            } else {
                $new_element.fadeIn(fadeInTime);
            }
            setTimeout(shuffleElement, timeout);
        }

        $(this).show();
        shuffleElement();
    }
})(jQuery);

The first time the shuffleElement() function is called $(shuffledElements).length equals 0, so no element is displayed. On the next call to shuffleElement(), the elements added with appendTo() are available and one is selected at random as expected. Everything works correctly after that.

Is there some way to refresh the DOM or make these elements available to jQuery immediately after I add them with appendTo()? Any other suggestions for how to accomplish this?