  The prototypical Casimir effect arises when a scalar field is confined
between parallel Dirichlet boundaries. We study corrections to this when the
boundaries themselves have apertures and edges. We consider several geometries:
a single plate with a slit in it, perpendicular plates separated by a gap, and
two parallel plates, one of which has a long slit of large width, related to
the case of one plate being semi-infinite. We develop a general formalism for
studying such problems, based on the wavefunctional for the field in the gap
between the plates. This formalism leads to a lower dimensional theory defined
on the open regions of the plates or boundaries. The Casimir energy is then
given in terms of the determinant of the nonlocal differential operator which
defines the lower dimensional theory. We develop perturbative methods for
computing these determinants. Our results are in good agreement with known
results based on Monte Carlo simulations. The method is well suited to
isolating the diffractive contributions to the Casimir energy.
