We consider model order reduction by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) for parametrized partial differential equations, where the underlying snapshots are computed with adaptive finite elements. We address computational and theoretical issues arising from the fact that the snapshots are members of different finite element spaces. We propose a method to create a POD-Galerkin model without interpolating the snapshots onto their common finite element mesh. The error of the reduced-order solution is not necessarily Galerkin orthogonal to the reduced space created from space-adapted snapshot. We analyze how this influences the error assessment for POD-Galerkin models of linear elliptic boundary value problems. As a numerical example we consider a two-dimensional convection-diffusion equation with a parametrized convective direction. To illustrate the applicability of our techniques to non-linear timedependent problems, we present a test case of a two-dimensional viscous Burgers equation with parametrized initial data.