I Don't Like Wire Frames as Much as I Do

If you have some ideas, at least sketch them out. At least get them out ready. That way you can refer back to them. You also ideally want to have a good idea of the minu structure and the actual page lay out. This is really important to do early on, because you don't want to start building a site that has five min items in the top bar then all of a sudden your client wants to completely change it.