Stacked ControlTemplates and loading behavior...

Dear all,
I am currently using control templates to implement my user interfaces and
it occurs that I am using stacked control templates. In the C# code file, I
am adding an Loaded event to obtain a reference to the control that is
definied in XAML in the 3rd or 4th level - example:

UserControl
TabBorder
DockPanel
Button

When I try to reference the button control in the Loaded event of the user
control I get a null reference. Calling ApplyTemplate on the user control
does not help.

My question: Is there no other - more elegant - solution than recursivly
catching the Loaded event of UserControl, TabBorder, DockPanel to get the
Button's reference?

Best regards and thanks a lot for your help
Meik