Validation Summary and Validation sequence of events

I have a validation summary control on my CreateUserWizard page and it only seems to show only after the page posts. Is this the intended behavior?
I have added a number of other text boxes to the Create User Wizard (First & Last Names & etc) and have attached validation controls to them; RequiredFieldValidator, RegularExpressionValidator and CustomValidator. When the user exits the field the RegularExpressionValidator triggers & my Text field of the validator shows immediately when the text in the textbox fails. This is good because it provides immediate feed back. But the summary control shows nothing. However the RequiredFieldValidation doesn't get invoked until I press the 'Create User' button, and still nothing shows in the summary control. Now when I fill in the form with seemingly passible data I call the Page.Validate method in a CreatingNewUser routine. Now my custom validators are called (I look for duplicates) a ...