Jack stands and wheels off. Definitely.

The brackets that hold the bumper to the fender above the amber side markers might fight you. Maybe be prepared to put new ones in after you have to mangle the originals.

 

As I remember when I changed mine in 2010 >>>>> I turned the steering wheel full left, removed enough fasteners to pull back the plastic wheelhouse liner, and forced it to remain back with a wooden block. That gave me enough access to undo the 2 fasteners of the fender to fascia attached stiffener on the passenger side. Then reversed the above for the drivers side. If those 2 uniquely shaped studs passing thru that stiffener that allow you to pull the fender/fascia together can not be forced upwards (to separate) all 3 of the components, frustration starts to set in. Mine popped out with no trouble, but others have had trouble ranging from hard to never getting results.

 

The wheels have to come off to get to all the fasteners. Especially the little philips screws at the bottoms.

 

It can be done, but it’s much easier and there’s less cussing going on if the front wheels are removed. Ask me how I know…

 

I've done it multiple times with just propping the front end up on jack stands and turning the wheel to full lock to get to the clips out

 

Just updating my own thread for the future person wondering the same. Did the headlight swap with the car completely on the ground. Wasn't that hard. I only popped two plastic fasteners off the wheel well to get to the two bolts behind the bumper. I popped out a 3rd fastener when I reinstalled it since the Bumper cover was a little bit tougher to get back on. but with a decent set of tools (socket with a lot of teeth, extension bar, fastener removal tool) it was fine. Wouldve been extremely hard with just a set of wrenches and those fasteners dont seem to come off easy if you don't have a fastener removal tool.

I thank everybody for the feedback.

I think if I had an actual jack and not just the scissor jack for putting a spare on, I might've opted to jack it up which would've got the tire out of the way even more, but it really was fine to do without propping the car up.

And finally, this videos strategy for popping the bumper out of the retention clips was a godsend.