Non-rigid shape registration is an important issue in computer vision. In this paper we propose a novel globalto- local procedure for aligning non-rigid shapes. The global similarity transformation is obtained based on the corresponding pairs found by matching shape context descriptors. The local deformation is performed within an optimization formulation, in which the bending energy of thin plate spline transformation is incorporated as a regularization term to keep the structure of the model shape preserved under the shape deformation. The optimization procedure drives the initial global registration towards the target shape that results in the one-to-one correspondence between the model and target shape. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.