Milpitas Resident Receives Marriage Proposal at Coffee Shop

Milpitas resident Catherine Kim first said “no” to Jack Shaw’s wedding proposal; but she was only kidding. Shaw deserved the verbal poke in the ribs after the very public way he popped the question at a couple weeks ago.

“I don’t like the attention. It was very sweet, though I thought he would propose in an intimate setting,” Kim says. “It was very over the top.”

There was more to the proposal than just Shaw, 29, getting down on one knee and offering a ring. It was an elaborate scheme that involved two videos, a couple of Build-A-Bear bears, a cluster of friends with more stuffed animals, balloons, and the permission of Bitter+Sweet owner to allow the big question to take place in her coffee shop.

“We’ve been dating for a while now, so proposing isn’t a surprise. We’ve been talking about it and planning it. I wanted to make it special,” Shaw says.

It started with the first video, Two of a Kind, which Shaw wrote and acted in. It’s the story of Shaw, who attended and , and his little boy bear in search of his perfect mate, which would be found by matching his bear to another stuffed animal. Shaw—an insurance broker and financial planner with an office in Cupertino—is a part-time actor and had a dream of going to film school. He used his natural talents in portraying a sad and lonely man who keeps striking out by trying to match his bear with the wrong stuffed animal.

“Everyone in the world had an animal that represents them (in the film). That’s the basis of the film, and I went from there,” he says.

Spoiler Alert: Yes, he finds his match, but in Two of a Kind we don’t see Kim’s face in the video because it is this video she is seen watching when we meet her in the second video, the video that shows the whole proposal event at Bitter+Sweet. (Both videos are attached to this article.)

Shaw says he chose Bitter+Sweet because he “wanted a nice intimate setting,” and “a coffee shop is always a good place” as opposed to an outdoor setting where there is less control over the environment. He knew he wanted the event filmed and the couple had been there a couple of times before and liked it. He checked with Chua to make sure she would be OK with the whole thing because he didn’t want to disrupt business or do anything to disturb her customers, he says.

He was after all setting a scene in order to get Kim to the coffee shop.

Kim was told that their mutual friend and videographer was filming a promotional video in the coffee shop and need friendly faces there to support him, all of which would explain the balloons, camera and other oddities.

They ordered drinks and took a seat then Shaw excused himself to go to the bathroom, but really he was hiding out while the rest of his plot unfolded.

Out came a laptop for Kim, who was seated in the middle of the room, and Two of a Kind was played for her. Then random people—friends of Shaw’s that Kim hadn’t met yet—brought up their own stuffed animals as if looking for their match, like in Two of a Kind. That’s when it started to click for her, what was going to happen. What did happen: the proposal.

One day, Kim may regret buying that video camera for Shaw, but she won’t regret the effort he went through or the sentiment behind Shaw’s proposal.

They are in the process of planning the wedding, which will probably be next spring, Shaw says.

The matching bears will have to have their place in the wedding, of course, Kim agrees.

Correction: Jack Shaw's age was incorrect in the original posting of this article. He is 29.

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