What order does my Asp.net code load in?

It's so confusing, but here's the main things you need to know: Individual ASP.NET server controls have their own life cycle that is similar to the page life cycle. For example, a control's Init and Load events occur during the corresponding page events. Although both Init and Load recursively occur on each control, they happen in reverse order. The Init event (and also the Unload event) for each child control occur before the corresponding event is raised for its container (bottom-up). However the Load event for a container occurs before the Load events for its child controls (top-down). Master pages behave like child controls on a page: the master page Init event occurs before the page Init and Load events, and the master page Load event occurs after the page Init and Load events.